Michal Rivlin (ISR)
“Checkpoint”
(Performance at the opening, 2011)
A modest religious woman, dressed in a mixture of Jewish and Arabic style clothes is present during the opening. She moves from the toilet to the bar and the gate. Using strategies of language and gestures, she instructs visitors to choose their gender (toilet), to drink to the revolution (bar), and inspects whether they took anything from the exhibition (gate). A modest woman, as a figure of otherness in a contemporary art gallery, and a common silent member for both Arab and Israeli cultures, creates zones of reconsideration of everyday’s rituals-checkpoints that serve as individual doors to the urgent political changes.